Many, Many Unaccredited Writers Worked on the ‘Wonder Woman’ Story

Audiences have grown accustomed to seeing a slew of screenwriter credits on summer blockbusters. A few studios, like Universal and Paramount, have put together writers’ rooms for their biggest franchises; some films also have a host of different writers who either worked to develop the story or hammered out the final screenplay itself. Therefore, fans probably won’t bat an eye when they see three different writers’ names pop up in the Wonder Womanopening credits, but to hear one of the film’s producers tell it, that’s only part of the story. The road to bring Wonder Woman to the big screen involved a whole host of writers who didn’t end up mentioned in the final product.

In a recent interview with Collider (via Heroic Hollywood), Wonder Woman producer Charles Roven attempted to detail the various writers who contributed to the project along the way. It’s a pretty lengthy exchange, so I’d encourage you to click through to read the full explanation, but here’s a section that highlights some of the process:

Really early on, before Patty came on the project, we put our toe in the water with two writers. They took completely different approaches on the material — one was the Crimean War and one was World War I, but a completely different World War I experience. We had quite a Writers Guild arbitration with a number of writers because we had a lot of writers, and then there were the preceding writers and the other incarnations of the development of Wonder Woman.

Roven goes on to explain that while the official accredited screenwriters are Zack Snyder, Allan Heinberg, and Jason Fuchs, countless others contributed along the way. Roven mentions that a previously attached Wonder Woman director — likely Michelle MacLaren, who exited the film in 2015 due to “creative differences” — had also brought on a few writers to develop the project, and that DC’s Geoff Johns also collaborated with Patty Jenkins on the “scene to scene” development of the final product. Ultimately, Roven describes Wonder Woman as having “more writers working at the same time” than any film he’s ever seen before. Given that fans and critics alike have fallen in love with Gal Gadot’s powerful superhero, it looks like this is the exception that proves the rule: too many cooks can spoil a broth.